This week, Mises Institute President Jeff Deist gave what is probably the most important libertarian speech made in the past decade (bold emphasis added):

…libertarians have a bad tendency to fall into utopianism, into portraying liberty as something new age and evolved. In this sense they can sound a lot like progressives: liberty will work when human finally shed their stubborn old ideas about family and tribe, become purely rational freethinkers (always the opposite), reject the mythology of religion and faith, and give up their outdated ethnic or nationalist or cultural alliances for the new hyper-individualist creed. We need people to drop their old-fashioned sexual hangups and bourgeois values, except for materialism. Because above all the archetypical libertarian is presented as an almost soulless economic actor, someone who will drop everything and move to Singapore tomorrow to make $20,000 more in the gig economy.

…It scarcely needs to be said that family has always been the first line of defense against the state, and the most important source of primary loyalty — or divided loyalty, from the perspective of politicians. Our connection with ancestors, and our concern for progeny, forms a story in which the state is not the main character. Family forms our earliest and hence most formative environment — and at least as an ideal, family provides both material and emotional support. Happy families actually exist.

But government wants us atomized, lonely, broke, vulnerable, dependent, and disconnected. So of course it attempts to break down families by taking kids away from them as early as possible, indoctrinating them in state schools, using welfare as a wedge, using the tax code as a wedge, discouraging marriage and large families, in fact discouraging any kind of intimacy that is not subject to public scrutiny, encouraging divorce, etc. etc.

This may all sound like right-wing talking points, but it doesn’t make it untrue.

…Religion forms another important line of defense against the state. In fact the whole history of man cannot be understood without understanding the role of religion. Even today healthy percentages of people in the West believe in God, regardless of their actual religious observance. And believing in a deity by itself challenges the state’s omniscience and status. Again, religion stands as a potential rival for the individual’s allegiance — And it has a pesky tendency to resurface no matter how much authoritarian governments try to suppress it.

…Mecca is not Paris, an Irishman is not an Aboriginal, a Buddhist is not a Rastafarian, a soccer mom is not a Russian. Is it our goal to convince them all to become thorough Rothbardians?

….In other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.

I highly recommend you read or listen to the entire speech. Libertarians everywhere would be wise to heed Deist’s counsel. He clearly understands that unless libertarians acknowledge these realities, they will be irrelevant in an age of renewed nationalism and decentralization.

Further, the myth of a “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” libertarianism is dead. A true libertarian society would be both fiscally and socially conservative. Libertinism is sustainable only by forcing a healthy, productive sector of a community to subsidize the behaviors of a few social parasites.

Blood and soil, God and nation – these are things that people value most, not cheap, imported goods or fast Internet connections and casual sex after a puff of weed. Any libertarian policy that ignores or rejects this truth is both flawed and useless to solving the very problems libertarianism claims to address.

15 Responses to Blood and Soil Libertarianism

“Blood and soil, God and nation – these are things that people value most, not cheap, imported goods or fast Internet connections and casual sex after a puff of weed”
Uh-huh, well if that’s the case then why is your philosophy not the dominant one? Why are you some random blogger rather than a high ranking politician?
The reason we have a society based on progressive ideas is because the majority of people believe in them. If the majority of people cared most about “blood and soil and God and nation” you wouldn’t even be writing this post. It would be redundant. You would have already won.

Uh-huh, well if that’s the case then why is your philosophy not the dominant one? Why are you some random blogger rather than a high ranking politician?

This is quite possibly the most random “rebuttal” I have ever received on this site – and that is saying something.

Why am I not a high-ranking politician? Reasons abound, one of which is I have no personal desire to run other people’s lives or wield the One Ring of Power.

The reason we have a society based on progressive ideas is because the majority of people believe in them. If the majority of people cared most about “blood and soil and God and nation” you wouldn’t even be writing this post. It would be redundant. You would have already won.

Now this is quite possibly the most absurd comment I’ve received on this site. You’re arguing the values in our society are completely based on voluntary consent of the people and have nothing to do with an entity known as the state that uses coercion and aggression to enforce its decrees. Also, please ignore Supreme Court ex cathedra pronouncements that alter the laws of 50 states for 330 million people. Also ignore the rampant corruption inherent in our political system and our military adventures overseas that Americans are opposed to but supported our the D.C. elite.

The reason we have a society “based” on progressive ideas is because Progressives have successfully and effectively used the violence of the state to force them down people’s throats and persecute those who do not comply. However, day is soon coming when the same thing will be done to them by their enemies, and when they cry out for mercy and compassion, no one will listen to them.

“The reason we have a society based on progressive ideas is because the majority of people believe in them. ” Or, perhaps, the reason is because the uber-rich and hyper-powerful want it that way. Maybe because “progressive” means totalitarian power for them and slavery for the average chump who doesn’t understand how philosophy works? My own sister told me the other day that she thought “philosophy” was a bunch of bullshit, and I had to tell her that if she didn’t take philosophy seriously then it was inevitable that she would fall prey to the Sophists, who preach bullshit philosophy and get away with it because most people can’t figure out what they are saying. Also, look at the way you use the world “progressive” as if it had a concrete definition in the first place. Does the word actually mean anything or is it an empty phrase that politicians and opinion leaders use to signal to their minions that a policy is good without anyone having to explain it? Same goes for words like “libertarian” and “conservative” and “left” and “right” and all words that are used deliberately to manipulate instead of to inform.

“Uh-huh, well if that’s the case then why is your philosophy not the dominant one? Why are you some random blogger rather than a high ranking politician?”

Why is Libertarianism not dominant? Because Libertarians are men of principle and care more about being correct & honest than winning. That’s why I like to hang out with them despite not being Libertarian myself. Idealism with integrity is rare.

Why is Question not a high-ranking politician? Because he never sold his soul on the stock market. If my Congressmen had any decency, they’d openly display their loyalties like a NASCAR firesuit.

Actually Buddhists and Rastafarians. far from being polar opposites, are very much alike. And for that matter, Irishmen and “aboriginals” (assuming you mean Australian aborigines) have a lot in common, thanks to the fact that most of the white people in Australia are of Irish ancestry.

Yeah sure, but really. the thing you call forced immigration or integration it is not really forced and certainly is not destroying the Western Culture. Postmodernist socialist communists do who are white middle aged spoiled statist people. Immigrants and people of different cultures are already living with their own people. No body is forcing them to live with Western Cultured white districts or communities. There is still freedom of movement in Europe you know. You’re exaggerating and making Libertarian ideas ‘Nazi’ “again.

Yeah sure, but really. the thing you call forced immigration or integration it is not really forced and certainly is not destroying the Western Culture.

Western governments are subsidizing the importation of foreign peoples who are living off welfare paid for by the native peoples. They are then covering up mass rapes and sexual assaults carried out by those immigrants.

They aren’t directly destroying it the same way a sore throat isn’t the cause for a cough; it’s a symptom.